I always tell my students to go back after a hundred pages and rewrite from the beginning. It's really harder if you've already finished four hundred pages and realize the first hundred aren't working.

To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.

I think the isolation in China also has to do with people's memories being wiped out, collective memories as well as individual memories, by the fact that the recent history has been constantly rewritten and revised.

Why do I write about China? That is a very good question. I think there are questions about China that I haven't been able to answer. The reason I write is that there are questions to which I want to find answers - or I want to find questions beyond those questions.

Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.

I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.

What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?